Ronald Lewis Vanderwal | |
---|---|
Born | 7 August 1938 |
Died | 19 July 2021 |
Nationality | American |
Citizenship | Australian |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Archaeology |
Institutions | La Trobe University Museum Victoria |
Ron Vanderwal (born 1938) [1] was an American-Australian Archaeologist who specialised in the prehistoric archaeology of the Pacific and New Guinea in particular. He worked at La Trobe University and the Museum of Victoria. [2] He died on 19 July 2021. [3]
Vanderwal studied Anthropology at Michigan State University (BA in 1961) and the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (MA in 1969). [1] From 1965 to 1969 he was archeologist in Kingston, Jamaica [4] where he help establish a museum at the Institute of Jamaica. He moved to Australia in the 1970s undertaking a PhD in the prehistory of Papua at the Australian National University and subsequently taking on a role at the Tasmanian Museum. [5] He was the first in 1969 to excavate the Yule Island site of Oposisi where the first millennium AD decorated Early Papuan pottery style horizon was defined. [6]
He taught archaeology and prehistory at La Trobe University in 1978 with David Frankel in Australian coastal archaeology including fieldwork in remote places such as his pioneering work on the Papuan coast into prehistoric pottery, also with Nigel Oram on the history of the material culture exchange system. [7] In 1981 he excavated the artificial mounds in the middle of Kinomere Village on Urama Island in the Papuan Gulf. [8] He also undertook research at the Victoria Archaeological Survey compiling ethnographic records and editing their records. [9]
Vanderwal began work at the Museum of Victoria on 31 August 1981 and was Senior Curator of Anthropology (Oceania) at Melbourne Museum up to his retirement in August 2009. [5] He established the Pacific Islands Advisory Group to include Islanders in the development of the museum exhibitions. In 2009 he received the Award for International Relations by the Australian branch of the International Council of Museums in recognition of his twenty years of work promoting the cultural rights of Pacific Islanders in collaboration with the Fiji Museum. [5]
Roger Curtis Green was an American-born, New Zealand-based archaeologist, professor emeritus at The University of Auckland, and member of the National Academy of Sciences and Royal Society of New Zealand. He was awarded the Hector and Marsden Medals and was an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his contributions to the study of Pacific culture history.
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Nigel Denis Oram , was a British born public servant, academic, ethnologist and anthropologist specialising in the Pacific and New Guinea and was an acknowledged specialist in Papuan oral history. He has influenced a number of later researchers in the field of Papuan and New Guinean anthropology and history and along with Vanderwal, he also established the Prehistory department at La Trobe University in 1976 and the chair in Prehistory in 1980.
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